Ordering Sephora from the UK

Edit: Well, as of the end of July 2018, all of this is irrelevant. Sephora have decided to re-direct UK visitors to their French site, and block us from shopping on the US site. They’re blaming GDPR which is nonsense – they’re either collecting data they shouldn’t or are just plain lazy to figure out EU regulations.

OK, so you can ask Google to translate the French website, but they don’t stock the same brands as the US site and there’s no VIB points to collect. Looks like I’m going to have to plan more trips to the States *sigh*

Us UK folk have been able to order Sephora for a while now, but I’ve always resisted. Sephora has always been a holiday treat for me, since my first trip to America a long time ago (sidebar – my first visit was actually to the UK store on my 18th birthday. I made my Mum drive me all the way to Bluewater where I spent all of my birthday money. Why did they leave us?!?!)

After three visits to the USA this year, my Sephora addiction has reached new highs, and the temptation of a birthday gift and 3x Beauty Insider points got to me so I placed my first online order.

It’s made incredibly easy as Sephora use Borderfree, so shipping is only $6 and all the customs and taxes are sorted on purchase – no guessing the upcoming bill or having the parcel held up at the border. Not only that, but my parcel arrived only 6 days after I ordered, which is faster than I receive most stuff I order in the UK.

As you can see from my photo, my order was largely sheet mask based, but I also picked up two sets – one of the reasons I love Sephora so much as it’s a great way to try products out. I picked out a Christophe Robin set as I’m trying to convince myself I don’t want to by a full size of the Regenerating Mask (I really do though – it’s so good). I also picked up a Peter Thomas Roth Cult Classics kit and am already a huge fan of the powder SPF and the cucumber eye patches.

But my experience wasn’t all positive. That birthday gift I talked about? Not available to me because I’m in the UK. I understand that some items are restricted for various reasons, but it’s super sucky that I can’t get my gift! Not only that, but none of the codes on the beauty offers page worked for me (all restricted), and those 3 free samples they rave about was bloody impossible – 12 to choose from, and only 3 were available to me. So I ‘chose’ those 3 only for them to ‘forget’ to include them.

When I raised this with them by email, they almost shrugged. I know it’s only free gifts, but I’ve almost reached VIB Rouge so I kind of expected more.

Still, I’ll carry on enjoying the many sheet masks I bought. Freebies aside, it was a good experience and I’ll probably end up making another purchase before the end of this year. Those Peter Thomas Roth eye patches are calling to me already.